By: Zach Olsen
The EEO-1 form has been the basis of data collection on employer workforce demographics for more than 50 years. Employers with 100 or more employees or federal contractors with 50 or more employees are annually required to submit EEO-1 reports. The EEO-1 form provides race, gender, and ethnicity information for employees by job category for each of an organization’s establishments.
In its terms of clearance for the EEO-1 form, OMB states it “approves this collection of information for 1 year. Before submitting the collection for future approvals, OMB requests that EEOC work closely with OMB to ensure that the collection is preparing to become fully compliant with upcoming revisions to OMB's Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity and any associated OMB guidance.” [emphasis added].
OMB has been planning revisions to federal standards on the collection of race and ethnicity since 2022. The group working on these revisions has indicated that they plan to complete their work by the summer of 2024. It appears OMB may be expecting that EEOC revise the EEO-1 form to incorporate any changes suggested by the committee studying race and ethnicity categories.
Takeaways for Employers
The primary change associated with the newly approved EEO-1 form is the elimination of Type 6 reports. Type 6 reports were only used by a small number of employers. These reports allowed an employer to provide summary data for a facility of less than 50 people. The new EEO-1 report will require employers to provide demographic data for all facilities regardless of their size.
OMB’s decision to approve an EEO-1 revision for only one year is consistent with OMB’s desire for future EEO-1 data collections to reflect any revisions to race and ethnicity categories. The biggest remaining question surrounds timing. Even if OMB proposes formal revisions to how race and ethnicity data is collected by Summer of 2024, it will take some time for EEOC to incorporate these changes into the EEO-1 form. The 2023 EEO-1 data collection may be significantly delayed or EEOC may simply seek an extension on the use of the currently approved EEO-1 form.
This one-year approval also raises the question of whether EEOC will propose further modifications to the EEO-1 form for 2024, particularly with regard to adding a pay reporting component once again. EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows has indicated in public statements that the commission is carefully considering their options with regard to a federal pay reporting tool. These statements, combined with Kalpana Kotagal joining the Commission and thus giving Democrats a majority for the first time in the Biden era, signals there could be further changes to the format of EEO-1 reporting.
DCI is continuing to monitor these developments and will provide more information and analysis as available.
